Cardinal Roger Mahony had retired with a tainted career after dodging criminal charges over how he handled pedophile priests.

It wasn’t clear whether the Vatican supported Archbishop Jose Gomez’s decision to publicly criticize a fellow priest and colleague. The announcement was seen as long overdue by victims and surprising to church experts who said it was unusual for an archbishop to take action against a higher-up.

The move came as the church was legally forced to release thousands of confidential files on pedophile priests — and two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed Mahony worked with top aides to protect the church from the engulfing scandal. One of those aides, then-Monsignor Thomas Curry, stepped down Thursday as auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles archdiocese’s Santa Barbara region.

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Gomez said Mahony, 76, would no longer have administrative or public duties in the diocese. It didn’t appear that Gomez’s actions would affect Mahony’s position in Rome, where he can remain for another four years on a counsel that selects the Pope.

“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading,” Gomez said in a statement, referring to 12,000 pages of files the church posted online Thursday night just hours after a judge’s order. “The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”

The fallout marks a dramatic shift from the days when members of the church hierarchy emerged largely unscathed despite the roles they played in covering up clergy sex abuse, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

“It’s quite extraordinary. I don’t think anything like this has happened before,” Reese said. “It’s showing that there are consequences now to mismanaging the sex abuse crisis.”

‘Do not underestimate the importance of one bishop publicly criticizing another. That is huge’

In an email, U.S. canon lawyer Nicholas Cafardi said Gomez was acting within his authority in preventing Mahony from having any public duties in the archdiocese.

“Basically, only the Holy See can sanction a cardinal,” he said. “It is fair to say that Gomez’ authority only runs to the limits of the archdiocese. Still, do not underestimate the importance of one bishop publicly criticizing another. That is huge.”

Several of the documents released late Thursday echo recurring themes that emerged over the past decade in dioceses nationwide, where church leaders moved problem priests between parishes and didn’t call the police.

In one instance, a draft of a plan with Mahony’s name on it calls for sending a molester priest to his native Spain for a minimum of seven years, paying him $400 a month and offering health insurance. In return, the cardinal would agree to write the Vatican and ask them to cancel his excommunication.

It was unclear whether the proposed agreement was enacted with the Rev. Jose Ugarte, who had been reported to the archdiocese 20 years earlier by a physician for drugging and raping a boy in a hotel, his file shows.

“He has been sexually involved with three young men in addition to the original allegations,” Curry, then Mahony’s point person for dealing with suspected priests, wrote in 1993.

In another case, Mahony resisted turning over a list of altar boys to police who were investigating claims against a visiting Mexican priest who was later determined to have molested 26 boys during a 10-month stint in Los Angeles. “We cannot give such a list for no cause whatsoever,” he wrote on a January 1988 memo.

Mahony, who retired in 2011 after more than a quarter-century at the helm of the archdiocese, has publicly apologized for mistakes he made in dealing with priests who molested children. He has survived three grand jury investigations and several depositions by civil attorneys representing alleged abuse victims.

‘The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children’

Prosecutors, who have been stymied for years in their attempts to see the internal church files, have said they will search for new evidence of criminal wrongdoing by church leaders. Most of the material, however, now falls well outside the statute of limitations.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias ordered the diocese to turn over the files Thursday without blacking out the names of top church officials who were responsible for handling the priests. The judge gave the archdiocese until Feb. 22 to turn over the files, but they were released less than an hour after she signed the order.

While the church left the names of church leaders intact, as specified, they removed names of victims, witnesses and priests who weren’t accused. In some instances, whole sections were removed.

The church said in a statement that the files’ release “concludes a sad and shameful chapter in the history of our local church.”

The archdiocese, with 4.3 million members, had planned to black out the names of members of the hierarchy who were responsible for the priests, and instead provide a cover sheet for each priest’s file, listing the names of top officials who handled that case. The church reversed course Wednesday after The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and plaintiff attorneys objected.

A record-breaking US$660-million settlement in 2007 with more than 500 alleged victims paved the way for the ultimate disclosure, but the archdiocese and individual priests fought to keep them secret for more than five years. Some church critics said Gomez’s actions, particularly against Mahony, amounted to a slap on the wrist as long as he remained a cardinal and a member of the powerful Vatican body that elects the Pope.

The reprimand is a “purely symbolic punishment that they hope will satisfy at least some people in the archdiocese,” said Terry McKiernan, founder of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks the release of priest files nationally. “I don’t think that many savvy observers of this will be deceived.”Statement on the release of clergy files by Archbishop of Los Angeles, José H. Gomez, Jan. 31, 2013:

My brothers and sisters in Christ,

This week we are releasing the files of priests who sexually abused children while they were serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

These files document abuses that happened decades ago. But that does not make them less serious.

I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.

We need to acknowledge that terrible failure today. We need to pray for everyone who has ever been hurt by members of the Church. And we need to continue to support the long and painful process of healing their wounds and restoring the trust that was broken.

I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused, has been the saddest experience I’ve had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011.

My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry has also publicly apologized for his decisions while serving as Vicar for Clergy. I have accepted his request to be relieved of his responsibility as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara.

To every victim of child sexual abuse by a member of our Church: I want to help you in your healing. I am profoundly sorry for these sins against you.

To every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I want you to know: We will continue, as we have for many years now, to immediately report every credible allegation of abuse to law enforcement authorities and to remove those credibly accused from ministry. We will continue to work, every day, to make sure that our children are safe and loved and cared for in our parishes, schools and in every ministry in the Archdiocese.

In the weeks ahead, I will address all of these matters in greater detail. Today is a time for prayer and reflection and deep compassion for the victims of child sexual abuse.

I entrust all of us and our children and families to the tender care and protection of our Blessed Mother Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of the Angels.

With the upcoming release of priests’ personnel files in the Archdiocese’s long struggle with the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, my thoughts and prayers turn toward the victims of this sinful abuse.

Various steps toward safeguarding all children in the Church began here in 1987 and progressed year by year as we learned more about those who abused and the ineffectiveness of so-called “treatments” at the time. Nonetheless, even as we began to confront the problem, I remained naïve myself about the full and lasting impact these horrible acts would have on the lives of those who were abused by men who were supposed to be their spiritual guides. That fuller awareness came for me when I began visiting personally with victims. During 2006, 2007 and 2008, I held personal visits with some 90 such victims.

Those visits were heart-wrenching experiences for me as I listened to the victims describe how they had their childhood and innocence stolen from them by clergy and by the Church. At times we cried together, we prayed together, we spent quiet moments in remembrance of their dreadful experience; at times the victims vented their pent up anger and frustration against me and the Church.

Toward the end of our visits I would offer the victims my personal apology—and took full responsibility—for my own failure to protect fully the children and youth entrusted into my care. I apologized for all of us in the Church for the years when ignorance, bad decisions and moral failings resulted in the unintended consequences of more being done to protect the Church—and even the clergy perpetrators—than was done to protect our children.

I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day. As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story.

The cards contain the name of each victim since each one is precious in God’s eyes and deserving of my own prayer and sacrifices for them. But I also list in parenthesis the name of the clergy perpetrator lest I forget that real priests created this appalling harm in the lives of innocent young people.

It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God’s grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life-journey continues forward with ever greater healing.